I downloaded a collection of poetry books by authors such as Emily Dickinson, William Blake and Walt Whitman and a number of other classics that are in the public domain, such as Moby Dick and The Odyssey.
The deeper I dug, the more amazed I became at the variety of free books that are available. I found books on just about any subject ranging from engineering, math, religion, philosophy, business, politics and folklore.
There was a decent selection of more current titles, not just the classics with expired copyright. For example, Anthony DePalma's City of Dust: Illness, Arrogance, and 9/11 was available for free compared to $25 for a hard copy. Other modern titles turned up, such as The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age by the MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning and a 2010 publication of Green Careers and Energy. And there were some pop fiction novels too.
There were also interesting obscure readings from various countries and cultures. I was especially intrigued by the Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen by A. Chodsko.
Here is a sampling of about 150 books that got loaded onto the SMU Kindle for free. Click on the image to make it bigger.
You can browse the Amazon Kindle store for the free books. It's not that easy to find them. There is no clear way to browse the entire collection of free books. I finally went to the Kindle store and filtered the books by lowest price first. The free ones came up on top.
There is also Manybooks.net. Check out their foreign language section.
And of course there is Project Gutenberg. The mobi format is compatible with Kindle.
Check out this post on more free ebook sites.
The SMU Kindle is now loaded with books and will go in circulation shortly. It will be interesting to see if students and faculty find it useful.
